


i thought you (loved me)

by livj707



Category: To the Moon Series (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, deep talks, i guess?, i just love neil and eva ok, it's light, listened to time is a place when i wrote this so yeah i'm emotionally fragile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21547648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livj707/pseuds/livj707
Summary: Six weeks after Neil and Eva fail to grant a patient’s wish, she finds a job offer on his desk.
Relationships: Eva Rosalene & Neil Watts, Eva Rosalene/Neil Watts
Comments: 20
Kudos: 49





	1. this is the night

**Author's Note:**

> creds for the concept and a few quotes to episode 1x04 of in plain sight, which i watched and basically decided “i can’t NOT make this rosawatts”
> 
> this is a self-indulgent mess enjoy

The very end of a case is by far the most stressful part. In the beginning, their work is laid out for them, hours or even days worth of time before their patient kicks the bucket. But in the end, those final few hours are when their process matters more than ever. There’s the hanging question of _Did we manage to get the job done, or are we in for an earful with our boss later?_

Neil leans against a tree in a park that is too bright and beautiful to be anything other than a fabricated memory, clicking his tongue as he observes the scene before him. Their patient, Anna, (not much younger than the Anna lying on her deathbed this very moment), sits alone on a park bench, crying into her hands, her blonde hair shielding her face. Only a few days before she makes the irrevocable decision to call Sigmund, only a few weeks before she winds up bedridden, her heart failing to sustain her life any longer. To be honest, the scene was quite hard to watch a few days ago, when Neil and Eva first entered the memory, and it was hard to watch when they returned before Eva left to send the signal. But now, after the fifth or sixth loop of hearing the same repetitive sobs, Neil is starting to get annoyed. He taps his foot, anxiously waiting for Eva to return. He can’t remember the last time they spent this much time on a patient, and every small vibration in the ground or ripple of the sky makes his pulse quicken. There’s no doubt they’ll be out of time soon. 

He glances around at the beautiful park. Even after all his years of working for SigCorp, the way the memories form into physical settings never fails to throw him off. There’s a type of distortion, the ground and sky emerging in dizzying, unnatural ways, buzzes and blurs and static bouncing off the edges of the dream. On his first day, he puked from the motion sickness.

He can’t help but notice how empty this particular park is, making Anna and a single bird on a lamppost its only inhabitants. Whether it truly was that empty that day, or if the seclusion is just a manifestation of Anna’s loneliness, he doesn’t know. 

There’s a sudden popping noise and Eva appears beside him, straightening her disheveled lab coat. He raises his eyebrows at her. “What happened? Something go wrong?”

“What? No, why?” Anna’s crying loop starts up again, and Eva turns her head towards the scene. “Oh, cucumbers.”

“So, I take it we messed something up.”

She runs her fingers through her dark hair, which is clearly in need of being brushed. Both of them are nothing short of exhausted. To remain sane and ensure the safety of the patient, they spent their third day taking turns napping. Still, the bags under their eyes are all too evident. “Clearly. Okay, fine. Let’s backtrack. What have we done so far?”

Their patient lived her life under the shadow of a terminal illness, under the unforgiving hold of pills and hospital visits and constant new life expectancies and so, so many numbers. Being diagnosed at a young age, her wish was not to eradicate the illness altogether, but rather to come to terms with it, dying with the knowledge that she lived her life to the fullest. “Well, we sent her on that family vacation she kept missing out on. We made her internet famous, led her through charities, made her write a damn book-”

“I was so sure that by her adult years, we’d succeeded in making her life a memorable one. So what might we be missing? Maybe we should consider our past cases.”

“Every patient is different,” Neil counters. “I can’t imagine it would do us a lot of good.”

And so they brainstorm, going over algorithms and possible key turning points in Anna’s life that would be most influential. They'd already collected every clue of her past regrets, everything she missed out on, turning them around and giving her the life they were sure she wanted. And though the threat of her impending passing still lingers, she’s _lived._

So why isn’t anything changing?

“Ugh, this is pointless.” Eva puts her face in her hands. “When was the last time we messed up this badly?”

Neil considers reaching out to her. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m sure it’s something small, like she missed a bullet on her bucket list or something. We have plenty of time to sort things out.”

And then Eva tenses, peering out from over hands past Neil. “No...we don’t.” He follows her gaze, only noticing moments later how the sky seems to be collapsing, the once-stagnant clouds folding in on themselves. There’s a loud crash and the world shifts, causing both doctors to nearly crumble to their knees. There’s a crack and the surrounding environment melts into a flat, white void, the only remaining ground being the stretch of where they stand to the bench Anna is hunched over in. Her sobs continue, louder and more violently than ever before.

“Damn it, not this again!” Neil shouts over the deafening crashes. “The patient isn’t stable!”

“That’s not it, Neil,” she responds, so quietly he barely hears her. But before he can ask her to repeat herself she pulls out Anna’s heart rate monitor, the one they were given before they started.

Neil isn’t a medical doctor, but even he can see the problem. 

“Oh,” he says. “Okay. Crap.”

“So whatever we’re about to do, we need to do it _fast_. I mean, lightning speed. Any ideas?”

“Okay, okay...do we have time to go back to any of her earlier memories?”

“Yes, but even if I’m being optimistic, we’ll only be able to squeeze in a couple trips. Which is why we need a plan, and now.”

But thinking is hard over the noise of Anna’s mind deteriorating. Neil balls his hands into tight fists, urging himself to come up with something while shame blocks his thoughts like a dense fog. _Maybe we wasted too much time when we first got here. We should’ve been on top of things. We should’ve been paying attention to her. How could we let this happen?_

“I’m lost. You?”

“Neil, it’s over.”

He blanks. “What?”

Her eyes say everything. She flashes Anna’s monitor again, the ever-quickening beats foreshadowing an imminent flatline. “It’s over. We tried.”

“No. We can’t give up.” _Not now. Not when we’re so close._

“It’s too dangerous.”

Her indifference is shocking to him. How can she just give in? “If we leave now, all our work will be reset, remember?”

“Yeah, and if we stay, we’re as good as dead,” she says.

He gapes at her. "I'm sorry, what happened to 'do everything for the good of the patient or we'll be in for court hearings?' Where's _that_ Eva?"

“The rules specifically say to get out if complications arise. I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”

“As if you ever listen to those rules.”

“Maybe not before. You don't think I want to be there for Anna? More than anything? But I have to be realistic here. We can't lose ourselves too." She frowns at him. “Why are you fighting so hard?”

Echos of Johnny’s case. Neil shivers. “Just...how about you go and I stay here. I’m sure I can grant her wish on my own.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Seriously, I’m not as helpless as you think I am.”

“That’s not it. The doctor gave her forty-eight hours, right? We’ve been here over four days. It’s over. She’s letting go.”

Neil doesn’t reply.

“Don’t you understand? We don’t have nearly enough time to grant her wish before she dies, and she’s too unstable to stick around any longer, let alone to start sifting through her memories. We can’t risk dying, too!”

Neil tries to argue but somehow he can’t find the words, and he stands staring at Eva with the same hopeless and numb feeling. He can’t leave Anna. He has to help her. There’s no other option.

"Leave,” he finally says. “Get out of here. Whatever happens, I'll live with it. Or...you know.”

She simply glares at him, a mix of frustration and sadness, before averting her eyes downwards. And then she vanishes.

He breathes a momentary sigh of relief before turning to the sight before him. The once-blue sky is no longer a sky, but a flickering grey grid. Anna and her park bench no longer remain. He didn’t even realize her sobs had stopped.

Neil prepares to transport himself to a past memory, but he’s rooted to the spot. He can’t even begin to rationalize where to go next, his next step. What’s the plan? He has no plan. His heart begins racing. _What am I doing here?_

And then his vision becomes blurred and blackened, and for a moment he thinks of his bottle of painkillers tucked at the bottom of his bag, wonders about the last time he took them, but then the world seems to fade and he blinks and finds himself sitting on a chair in the patient’s bedroom. 

It takes a moment for him to readjust, for the rest of the room to bleed into his vision, but when it does, nausea sweeps through him. His eyes shift up towards Eva, who stands at the machine, eyeing him cautiously. He tries to protest, but he's still waiting for the feeling to return to his body. The machine was made to be left consensually, and being kicked out of it is by far the most painful way to return to reality. Before he can yell at Eva for her irresponsibility, however, he hears a long, droning sound. The heart rate monitor.

Neil turns his head to see Anna’s children, who stand next to their mother’s bedside. They’re the only other people in the room; the medical doctor must have left to give them time alone. The siblings, who aren’t that much younger than Neil and Eva, glance at the monitor, then at each other, then at them, clearly awaiting an explanation. He sighs. _Oh, boy._

"What happened?" The oldest - Milo - asks. His younger sister stares at them expectantly. They both share their mother’s features, dark blonde hair and brown eyes, dimples and cheekbones. It’s like they’re staring at Anna herself, facing their failure in the most guilt-inducing way. Neil swallows an unexpected lump in his throat. It isn't often that they're forced to tell a family they failed to grant their loved one's wish, which only makes it harder to do so. They barely train for this. It isn't _supposed_ to happen.

"Milo, Charlotte…" Eva starts, and Neil feels both relief and shame. There's no way he can ever make it up to Eva for always handling this burden. He doesn't express his gratitude enough. "We did everything we could, but there simply wasn't enough time to grant your mother's wish before her heart stopped. I'm so sorry." Her tone is professional, but he knows her. He knows she's just as broken as he is. 

Charlotte glances at her brother, tears evident in her eyes, as if for confirmation, before burying her face in his shoulder and dissolving into sobs. Eva directs her gaze to the floor. Neil pretends to busy himself with the torn fabric of his chair. 

He packs up the equipment as Eva continues to make funeral arrangements with the siblings, all sound reduced to faint humming in his ears. It all feels heavier, somehow, and his arms ache with the effort. He makes his way out of the bedroom, down the stairs, outside into the garden, down the path to the car. He piles it all into the trunk and slams the door with unexpected force. All while pain weighs heavy on his shoulders. His breath hitches in his throat. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

He sits in the car until Eva returns.

“Got everything?”

He nods.

“Better head back, then. You know how busy the roads get around this time.”

And so begins the drive back to Sigmund, all in complete silence. They don’t talk about it. They never do.


	2. when these woods

_six weeks later_

"This is Dr. Von Matterhorn...Dr. _Lorenzo_ Von Matterhorn! Kidding, it's Neil. I'm clearly too busy to answer your call, so just shoot me a text and I'll get back to you ASAP. Don't leave me a voicemail because I won't listen to it."

Eva taps her fingers against the side of her phone, sighing in defeat. She isn't surprised Neil won't answer her calls, but it doesn’t diminish her irritation. She knows he always gets to work a bit later than she does (and usually stays later to make up for it), but right now they have a new case. From the details the patient's son told her, their destination is at best a forty-five-minute drive, and the last thing she wants is to keep them waiting, especially since every second is sacred in her line of work.

She dials him for the third time, and when he doesn't answer, goes across the hall to his office in case he arrived earlier without her knowledge.

When she knocks on his door, it swings open.

After a brief peek inside tells her Neil isn't at his desk, she enters, glancing around the corner to see if he’s poking around in a cabinet or drawer. He isn’t.

She glances around the room. Her own office isn’t exactly cluttered with decorations or personal items, but Neil’s feels so _empty._ She circles his desk, fingers brushing against the wooden edge, taking notice of its organization, the total cleanliness with the exception of a single stack of papers on the far right. All his drawers and cabinets are closed, and the floor is spotless. If she didn’t know any better she’d think whoever owned this office had just started the job last week. 

There’s something both incredibly unnerving and fascinating about being in Neil’s office, his work space. It’s not like she’s never been here before, but still, it feels _wrong_ in a way. She knows her partner well enough to know how secretive he is, and that leads her to believe he wouldn’t want her to be here.

She leaves the room, reaching forward to pull the door closed, but something catches her eye.

Atop the neat stack of paper sits an envelope, the flap messily torn open. Eva narrows her eyebrows. Neil never keeps mail.

With a quick glimpse over her shoulder, she reenters the room and closes the door, approaching his desk once more. She picks up the envelope and flips it over. Printed onto the fold of the paper is a symbol and the unmistakable words _Institute for Biological Sciences_.

In a haze, Eva scrambles to pull the letter itself out and skims through it so quickly she has to reread it several times before she fully comprehends it.

_Dear Dr. Neil Watts,_

_Due to your impressive achievements in the biology and psychology fields, we'd be honored to have you join our research team. I am sure you will contribute much to our department in terms of your extensive knowledge on the human mind and the complex process of memory traversal. As we discussed during our last interview, we wish to finalize your position as soon as possible and hope to hear from you within the month._

_Last interview?_ What last interview?

Her mind spins, reading over the letter one last time. After a few moments, the full weight of it all settles inside her. Neil is quitting. Neil is leaving.

What made him decide this? Why does he want to leave at all?

How long has he been lying to her?

But once she sets the letter back in its place, she wonders how she didn't notice it before. _Anna._

Just the thought of her is enough to bring tears to her eyes; Eva tries to hide it, but the guilt of that day has kept her up every single night since it happened. And even though Neil hides it even better, she knows it has for him, too.

She noticed he's been acting weird lately, but she didn't question it much. Nor did she connect the dots between his odd behavior and their disaster of a case six weeks ago.

Is that why he's quitting? Because of one patient?

As if on cue, her phone begins vibrating in her pocket. Alongside it, her arguably tasteless and definitely illegal _Everything’s Alright_ ringtone. She forgot she had the volume on so high, and she jumps, startled, like she's just been caught doing something she shouldn't be. Before she can pull herself together, she answers it.

"Neil, where the hell are you? We have a new case, and time is ticking."

"Sorry Eves, I was taking my lunch break."

She looks at the clock above his desk. "Your lunch break was two hours ago. And don't call me Eves."

“Well, you know what I always say: Lunch _is_ the most important meal of the day.” In other words, _I’m avoiding work and two hours is roughly the maximum amount of time you can take a break without getting fired._ “I'll swing by to pick you up?"

Eva hesitates, stumbles over her words, and dozens of possible responses spring to mind. Still, she settles on "Okay."

He arrives exactly ten minutes later, with Eva standing outside despite the November chill. She doesn’t care. Buildings suffocate her; she needs cold air to breathe, to think.

She wishes she hadn’t left her coat at home, though.

She forces him into the passenger seat (“Come on, _one_ little accident and now I’m banned from driving forever?”) and slides into the driver’s side, angrily turning on the heat when she finds herself shivering harder than before. She never understood why he likes it so damn cold.

“Isn’t this the car that Taima and Willis had trouble with on their last mission?” Eva says as she pulls out of the parking lot, the patient’s home plugged into the car’s GPS. “I hate using these pieces of junk.”

“Meh, it’ll be fine,” Neil replies, lowering his seat into a reclining position. “The boss wouldn’t let us use an unsafe car. It goes against safety regulations, or whatever.”

“Pfft, what safety regulations?” Eva scoffs. “Anyways, can you call the patient’s son and tell him that we’re on our way? I don’t want him to think we skipped out.”

“Roger that.”

Eva bites her tongue to stop herself from saying anything further. She can’t. She won’t. _When he wants to tell me, he will. If he wants to continue lying, that’s his problem._

They drive in relative silence, Neil making the occasional stupid remark that Eva rolls her eyes at. The cars around them slowly start to vanish as the bustling city street turns into a quiet, wooded road. Though most of the trees are lush and full, autumn leaves cover the ground and sit in piles next to every occasional driveway. Neil is sprawled out in his seat like a kid bored during a car ride, scrolling through his phone impatiently. 

“Wow, we are way out here. I’m not getting any signal.”

“Relax, we’ll be there soon," she says, a little harsher than she intended. “Why are you so bored anyway? We’ve been on the road for _maybe_ half an hour. We do trips longer than that all the time. Way longer.”

Neil pockets the phone. “Yeah, well, we usually play I Spy during those trips.”

“No, we don’t.”

“We do, you’re just not very good at it.”

“Look, can you just let me drive?” Eva snaps. “Just shut up and stare out the window.”

There’s a brief pause. “Okay, you seem more prickly than usual. And that’s saying something. What’s with the attitude, Eves?”

She keeps her eyes on the road. “I don’t have an attitude. And don’t call me Eves.”

“Oh, come on, you’re as obvious as you are stubborn. What did I do this time? Oh, crap,” he reaches for his phone, “what day is it?”

“No, it isn’t my birthday, Neil.”

“Okay, okay…” he leans back in his seat, tilting his head upwards in contemplation. “I didn’t invite you to lunch? No, you ate with your sister today. Let’s see...oh, is it because you were stuck outside for two hours yesterday because I borrowed your key card and forgot to give it back?"

 _I'm already over that._ "I told you, nothing's wrong." Yet again, she winces at her tone. 

" _Oh,_ it's because you found out I've been rearranging the apps on your desktop for the past month."

"You _what?"_ Eva angrily whirls to face him. "You ass, I thought I was losing my mind!"

"Well, if it's not that, then what?"

As their destination appears through the trees, Eva slows the car and turns into the driveway. "Nothing. Now shut up, we have business to take care of."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these idiots are so in love pass it on


	3. sigh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (remember those walls i built?  
> they're tumbling down)

“Wow, their place has a nice view,” Neil says as soon as they’ve separated from the pair and settled within their first memory, an old office at some paper company. “Almost gives the Wyles' a run for their money.”

The patient’s son and medical doctor welcomed them with open arms, despite arriving embarrassingly late. They even bombarded them with insistent offers of tea and other delicacies before they politely explained that they needed to get to work as soon as possible. The wish is simple enough that they'll probably be able to get everything done before tomorrow. Hopefully.

Eva rolls her eyes, but doesn’t reply. He isn’t wrong; the cottage sits atop a small cliff surrounded by dark green pine trees, overlooking a crystal blue pond. Already she misses the sounds of the rushing water and the smell of the crisp autumn air, her head swimming from the carefully neutral beige-grey tones of their current environment. 

“Hey, are you gonna keep up the silent treatment?" Neil says as she quietly ambles around the office. "Because we have this little thing called our job.”

“As always, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Eva, this isn’t about me anymore, okay?” Neil grabs her arm to stop her. “Have you forgotten we have a dying man to help? We have to communicate here.”

She shrugs him off and begins sifting through filing cabinets. “Why does it matter? Soon enough, we won’t even be partners.”

There’s a loud silence after her words, making her stomach turn. She doesn’t have to see Neil to know his facial expression. “What? What are you…” He trails off, as if struck by a sudden realization but waiting for Eva to confirm it.

“The letter. I saw it.”

"You went through my mail?”

“ _Institute for Biological Sciences_ _._ Really, Neil? Of all places?”

 _“You went through my mail?"_ He half-whispers, exasperated. "Forget that, you went in my office?” 

Hesitantly Eva turns to face him, and he’s watching her dumbfounded, caught somewhere between rage and humility and shock. Subtle guilt prickles her insides.

“The door was unlocked,” she tries sheepishly. He scoffs, turning away from her. “Look, I’m sorry, but it’s not like I went shuffling through your desk. It was just sitting there.” _How did I end up being the one to apologize? He’s the one at fault here._ “You’re my partner, Neil! I’m supposed to trust you!”

“ _Trust?_ You wanna talk about trust?” Neil’s voice is sharp, his eyes narrow. “So going through my mail without my permission, that wasn’t an abuse of my trust?”

“You’re the one always keeping secrets," she finds herself shouting, forgetting for a moment that she had been holding a stack of files. They slip from her grasp and onto the floor. "You’re the one who lied to me.”

“It wasn’t _lying,_ Eva, it was _withholding information._ There’s a difference.”

"Fine," she speaks slowly, her voice lowered in an attempt to calm the situation, "You withheld information. Why, then? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s none of your business. You snooped. In my office. Not even Roxie would stoop that low, and she’s as close to being a stalker as you can possibly be without getting a restraining order."

"Maybe I wouldn’t have had to _snoop_ if you picked up your phone after the third ring,” Eva argues. “We have responsibilities, you know." 

“Well, next time I’m looking for you in your office, I’ll remember there are no more boundaries.”

“Were you even planning on telling me?” she continues, ignoring his retort. “Or were you just gonna stop coming to work and hope I figured it out?"

“Actually, I was gonna write you a letter and mail it to myself. That way, I’d be sure you got it.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…” Eva shoves her face into her hands. Suddenly she's very aware of where she is, where they are, and she's grateful that nobody outside the memory can see them. “We don’t have time for this." 

“I completely agree. You started it.”

“What are you, nine?”

“I just think you should claim responsibility for the argument, that’s all,” he replies with a sarcastic shrug. “We can talk later. Let’s just focus on finding the mementos.”

They end up finishing just shy of midnight, packing up the car in the pitch darkness and bracing themselves for what will undoubtedly be an uncomfortable journey back to the offices. _We’re both adults,_ Eva thinks. _There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to handle this maturely._ The first twenty-or-so minutes of the drive drag by with little conversation.

“I’m just saying,” Neil rambles on, judging their patient as par for the course, “if you like a girl, you don’t wait four years to ask her out.”

“Like you’re such a relationship expert,” Eva says. She still doesn’t like the way they left things, and while she’s not in the mood to talk about it, she can’t completely look past it, either. “Can’t we just drive in silence? Please?”

“You’re just mad because I’m upgrading and you’re not," he says with a sly grin.

“Please, I’d hardly call _that_ an upgrade." She can't imagine Neil living that kind of lifestyle; hunched over microscopes and data tables, wearing a different lab coat with a different name tag, working under higher powers who don't give a damn about him, only what he has to offer them. "Do you know how many people dream of working for Sigmund? Or Hermann, for that matter? Don’t you remember how hard we worked to get here?”

“Yeah, well…” Neil turns to look out the window. “Maybe it just isn’t for me.”

“How can you say that? After all we’ve been through?”

She thinks Neil is about to respond, but there’s a sudden ugly grating noise that interrupts his words. The car seems to rumble and shake beneath them. 

“No, no, no,” Eva mumbles, eyeing the ominous blinking lighting up the car’s dashboard.

“Uh, maybe you should pull over.”

Mentally she scolds herself for leaving with this car in the first place. She knows next to nothing about car engines, and surely Neil won't be of much help. Eva guides the car slowly to the side of the road and they screech to a halt. The car powers down, plunging them into silence as the heat goes out. They sit semi-awkwardly for a moment.

“Well, good thing this didn’t happen on the way there, right?” Neil says as he pulls out his phone. “No problemo, I’ll just call Roxie to come get us. I don’t think we’re too far from the offices.”

“Do you really think she’ll be awake at…” She shakes her head as he glares at her. “Right, forgot who I was talking about.”

“Yeah, that girl wouldn’t know sleep if she fell into a coma.” He frowns. “Ah, no signal.”

She groans, pressing her forehead against the steering wheel. _Of course._ Already she begins to feel the lack of a heater. This is what she needs, to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with Neil Watts. “Neil, _why_ didn’t you ask the boss to swap cars? You knew this one had problems."

“Wait, wait, you’re putting all the blame on me? You knew the car had problems too! But yeah, no, in hindsight…”

She ignores him, partly because she knows he has a point. “Okay, I think there’s a bus stop a few blocks ahead with some payphones. See, you constantly chaff me for memorizing phone numbers, and now it’s coming in handy.”

She steps outside, the full strength of the wind nearly knocking her off her feet. “Coming?”

“Eh, I don’t know..." Neil mumbles. "Someone’s gotta watch the car…”

Eva rolls her eyes. “Tell me the day you quit so I can circle it on my calendar.”

She manages to get a couple quarters out of him and makes the perilous hike to the bus stop, hugging her arms around her body and keeping her head ducked to avoid the wind. Miraculously but unsurprisingly, she manages to get ahold of Roxie (“Nope, not busy, just eating ice cream on my couch, haha!”). After explaining their situation and doing her best to describe their location, she makes her way back to the car, standing guard by the side of the road to wait for Roxie, or in case any good Samaritans decide to offer them any aid.

She has a sweater on, but her lab coat only provides so much warmth, and the breeze has since picked up, whipping her dark hair around in front of her face. Numbness burns at her nose and cheeks. She imagines Neil must be laughing at her from where he sits, watching her stubbornly hold herself upright in the night while autumn wind threatens to tear her down any second.

She's being immature. She knows.

As anticipated, she hears a click a few minutes later, and Neil’s voice shouts through the door he cracked open. “Hey, weirdo, it’s warmer in the car.”

“How? The heat isn’t even on.”

“Because there’s no wind, smartass. Rox won’t be here for at least twenty minutes, and you forgot your jacket again. Please.”

And so, Eva slides into the front seat again (albeit reluctantly), grateful to finally have at least some shelter. A nearby street lamp illuminates them ever-so-slightly in a dim white glow. Neil is leaning forward in his seat, eyes trained on the windshield, which has already begun to be sprinkled in tiny, crystallized snowflakes. She breathes, clears her throat, presses her shivering hands together to warm them. The silence between the two of them is glaring, and Eva tries to remind herself that nothing's changed. Not really. Not yet.

“First the squirrel, and now this?” Neil jokes. “I swear, I’m never getting into a car with you again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Neil?”

And then he falls silent, thinking, maybe, annoyed with her, probably. For a moment she wonders if she pushed him too far, if she struck some kind of nerve. She should just let it go. As angry and hurt as she is _(was)_ , it’s really not her business. Neil has his life, his privacy, and she has hers.

But before she can apologize, he finally speaks.

“Has it ever occurred to you there's a possibility I’m _not_ taking the job?”

Eva opens her mouth. Then closes it. No, it hasn’t. “Well...are you?”

A pause. “I don’t know.”

“Well, there you go. That’s not a no.” And then, despite herself, she faces him. "The letter mentioned an interview. You had an interview, possibly multiple, with these people. I don't know, I guess I just assumed…”

“An interview doesn’t mean I accepted the job, Eva. I just needed to meet them. Get a feel for it, you know?” There’s something strangely personal about the way their voices seem to collide, the way their breath turns to fog in the shallow space of the car while the snow outside dances and billows, entrapping the world in a sea of white. It’s all very personal, the _closeness_ of it, and yet it feels warm, familiar. Safe. “I had to really think about it. You know how deeply I think.” 

She smiles a bit at his attempt at humor, a sudden ache making itself apparent in her chest. She doesn’t want to miss him. God, she’s afraid of missing him.

"I guess I just...didn't want to hurt you," he speaks in almost a whisper. "I didn't want you to think I was abandoning you."

"Until you accepted the job, you mean." 

"Are you telling me you've never once considered working anywhere else?"

She has. Many, many times. She thought about it after Johnny and River. She thought about it seeing the hundreds of protesters lined up outside, determined to bring their company to the ground. But this job is her lifeline. It's her home. "Sometimes, but...what even brought this on? I _know_ you love working at Sigmund, and I thought you…” Her words trail off. What did she think? “I thought we were friends.”

“We are,” Neil says almost immediately. “Of course we are."

“So? Why leave? Is it about Anna?”

Saying her name is like being stuck with a needle without warning, a pain so sharp and cruel and _relentless_ shooting through her, turning her mind to stone and her heart to ice. She wants to forget about Anna altogether. She wants to forgive herself.

More heavy silence.

“Neil, I know it’s a huge weight, but we can’t always do what we set out to do." It feels hypocritical, consoling Neil for an event she feels just as terrible about, but she knows there's some truth in her words. She just wishes she believed them herself. "Mistakes happen. We all make them. This isn’t even the first patient we’ve failed to help.”

“And it won’t be our last.”

There it is. “So this _is_ about her.”

“Yes. And no.”

Eva falls quiet, silently prodding him on.

“It’s everything. Everything that’s happened since I started working here. All the lives I’ve seen fall apart, the lives we’ve altered and cleaned until they’re not even the same anymore. And all the little fixes, they add up. We go into these people’s heads and when we leave they’re something completely artificial. We feed them so many _lies,_ Eva. Not to mention seeing their pain and grief play out right before our eyes, pretending it doesn’t affect us. It does. It always does.” He takes a deep, shaky breath. “It’s just...a lot.”

Eva lets the words settle in the air. She wishes she knew what to say to him. 

“Don’t you remember when you asked me if what we do is really right?” he continues. “If it’s worth the price we’re paying? What the _patients_ are paying? And I said something stupid about how their single second of happiness makes up for our hours of destruction?

“It wasn’t stupid,” Eva says quietly. 

“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we _are_ in over our heads here. And the fact that we couldn’t save Anna…” She hears a slight break in his voice, and he clears his throat awkwardly. “We couldn’t give her life purpose. And I just...struggle to see the point anymore. I’m really sorry.”

She swears she’s never heard such a genuine apology from him before.

When Eva was twelve she lost her grandmother, a quiet, hardened woman with a nasty cough and years of smoking having torn her body apart from the inside out. During their last conversation together, in the freezing and awfully-decorated room of the hospice center, her grandmother taught her about regret. This woman, with wrinkles and hands worn with age, practically begged the universe for more time. Desperately she wished for another chance to connect with her and Traci, a way to turn back the clock and avoid ever picking up a box of cigarettes in the first place. More time. _More time._

At Sigmund, Eva can do _exactly_ that. She can make dreams come true.

So what if it isn't real? It's real to their patients.

“Neil, why did you take this job?”

“Because I make bank and I look good in a lab coat."

 _I’m serious._ “Why?”

He takes his glasses off with one hand, rubbing his face with the other. Breathes in. Out. “Because everyone has the right to live their life however they want, but nobody knows when their time is up. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair that they can die any second. I want people to have an opportunity to make things right. I want to give them that second chance.”

“Then do it,” Eva says simply. And, after a careful pause, places her hand atop his. “This is your job, and you’re better at it than anybody I’ve ever met. You can’t turn your back on it.”

He looks at her. Their eyes meet.

And a million unspoken moments pass between them in an instant, their friendship, their partnership. Working side-by-side during the best of times, during the worst of times, and everything in between. Jokes that make them cry with laughter and tentative words of comfort. Years and years worth of memories, difficult cases and late-night last minute work sessions and rainy days.

She doesn't want to lose this. Ever. 

“For the record," she says quietly, softly, as if afraid she might scare him away, “you’re kind of my only friend.”

“I know." His voice, just as light as her own. He tightens his hand around hers. "And you’re my only friend.”

There's a scratch of tires against asphalt and sudden headlights blind her vision, and they immediately pull their hands away, Eva using hers to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Warmth flares in her cheeks. Through the snowy windshield she spots Roxie’s signature white car parked in front of theirs, the perky blonde sauntering towards them. _Thank God._

“Rox, I have never been more glad to see you,” Neil says as soon as they’re outside. Roxie is bundled head to toe in pink winter attire, her pale cheeks already turning a similar shade. 

She smiles brightly, waving a gloved hand. “Aw, it's nothing. Jeez, it sure is freezing out here.”

“Yeah, it is,” Eva says in agreement. _You don't know the half of it._ “So, you got us a tow?”

“Yep! It's on its way right now. But I can give you guys a ride back to the offices if you want."

“That would be great, thank you." She makes a mental note to shower her co-worker in proper gratitude later when she's less exhausted.

Eva turns her head towards Neil, but he’s off leaning against their car, his back to her, gazing into the trees. As Roxie rushes to her car to collect blankets ("You two look nearly frostbitten!"), she approaches him.

“You good?” She asks, once she's taken her place next to him, trying to control her shivering.

He glances at her, gently, his brown hair tousled and coated in delicate snowflakes, and his lips upturn in a soft smile.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m good.”

Neil’s office door is closed; locked, this time (he needs to be better about remembering to do that).

Sigmund was pretty much empty when they got back, and Roxie left soon after arrival. Eva is waiting in the hall for him. She was kind enough to offer him a ride home, despite all the driving she already did today. Not to mention the hell he must have put her through. He regrets all of it already. The lies, the secrets, his overall attitude towards her. Sometimes he forgets how much she means to him.

He needs to be better at remembering that, too.

He shoves the remainder of his things into his work bag, and his fingers brush against his bottle of painkillers sitting at the bottom. He closes his eyes, lifting it from its hiding spot. Eyes it slowly and carefully, as if staring at it will make it cease to exist completely, undo all the damage it's done.

“Hey, you coming?” Eva’s voice at the door, combined with a quick rap of her knuckles against the wood.

“Yeah, I'll be right there,” he shouts back, tossing the bottle into his bag without another look.

Neil is making his way towards the door when the letter catches his eye, still balancing precariously on his stack of miscellaneous papers. He lifts it up and reads it once, twice, once more.

He crumples it up and tosses it in the wastebasket before leaving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (they didn't even put up a fight  
> they didn't even make a sound)


End file.
